This movie thankfully wasn't as cringe-worthy as I had feared. It has stereotypes which I'll address later but as almost 1,000 (!) people have only started following me after the summer of 2020 so I first have to explain why I feel melancholy this weekend, i.e. Mother's Day being today. This is another movie I hadn't seen since I was a little kid so it's probably been at least 30 years; it was a rental done by mom. From the start of 2020 to late July, mom was sick and she eventually passed away. All I'll say that it was NOT COVID, but it was a miserable illness. You can just imagine how I felt about the subplot of Dumbo being separated from his mother or especially the song she sings to him... my personal feelings aside this isn't a dark depressing movie to avoid. From now on I'll only occasionally mention my family; circumstances dictated my immediate family being brought up a few times in the opening week of May.
Of course, this is still a movie where human beings and even other elephants act deplorably to a baby elephant just because it has oversized ears. Thank heavens for Timothy the Mouse; he was F'ing awesome! He rightfully chastised and scared those nasty gossiping elephants and went the extra mile to help his new buddy. A few moments that made me sad aside, it's a nice movie which has some worthwhile life lessons, lovely animation, charming music... Dumbo and Timothy accidentally getting drunk-although I think it was laced w/ LSD as I've never seen pink elephants while tanked, which literally happened in what was the highlight animation wise-and oh yeah, stereotypical crows. That is the ELEPHANT in the room.
Late in this 64 minute film a quintet of crows show up and well, they act “Black”; as a dumb white guy I thought they were stereotypical but not grossly offensive caricatures. Of course your mileage my vary-at least the quintet weren't made to look like absolute buffoons, they eventually helped Dumbo out and a catchy song was sung by them. This was not on Disney + when the service first launched so I am glad it was added. Personally, the crows were far less questionable than the worst elements of Song of the South.
Before anyone asks, I've only heard dire things about Tim Burton's Dumbo so I'll pass on that.
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